A Socially Conscious Professor: Dr. Diana Flannery

By OBOS — May 4, 2009

From 2009 – 2011, Our Bodies Ourselves honored the work of women’s health advocates worldwide by asking readers to nominate their favorite women’s health hero. View all nominees by year: 2009, 2010, 2011

Entrant: Libby Schaefer

Nominee: Dr. Diana Flannery, Professor, Ph.D.

Dr. Diana Flannery, Ph.D., is my Women’s Health hero.

I took a Women’s Health course from Diana in college and absolutely loved it. Dr. Flannery is Professor in the Department of Health and Community Services at California State University, Chico. She has delivered presentations of her work both internationally and nationally to various organizations and has published articles on tobacco, sexual health, and service learning related topics. Dr. Flannery is involved with many different population groups and instructional methods, including service learning, feminist activism, K-12 education, and environmental education and justice.

For many years, her students have been engaged in fundraising and pesticide awareness programs to migrant farm workers and their families in Butte and Glenn Counties, and have created educational materials for women’s organizations and the local environmental health department. Her teaching style and classroom environment is politically driven, socially conscious, student centered and empowerment driven. I know that students appreciate her humor and her straight forward approach to education and communication. Dr. Flannery ‘tells it like it is’ and students really respond to this with passionate engagement and discussion.

It’s amazing how these things happen in our lives; I enrolled in Dr. Flannery’s course on Women’s Health as a junior in college and it helped spearhead within me an interest in Women’s Health and social justice that brought me to the Peace Corps in West Africa and to medical school and a residency in Family Medicine, where I am now providing full spectrum health care to my patients everyday.

I love what I do and I always think about Dr. Flannery when I talk with my patients, from childhood through pregnancy and menopause, we cover the entire life cycle. I thank her for that foundation that she provided to me and many other young women and men in college who are seeking honesty and education regarding their health care needs. I wanted to thank Diana for all that she does. Thank you for this opportunity.

One response to “A Socially Conscious Professor: Dr. Diana Flannery”

  1. Diana Flannery is an inspiring professor who is loved by all her students.

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